We’ve all suffered at the hands of these rent seekers. Suck it up, I say.

I don’t usually call it before Easter and some may be holding out, but it was HOT last week!

Is it really G&T season already?

I really haven’t joined the discussion on this matter in the previous posts, because it’s not something I’m terribly interested in. But now that we’re here…

I keep seeing the comments by the restaurant folks and liquor store folks, that this will hurt both of their bottom lines, and we just don’t know. I don’t think you can really apply what has happened in other states to this situation, so it’s just a wait and see type of thing. I hope they are at least able to break even, and even profit as I do for all small businesses.

The flip side of the negative assumptions are, it will probably be great for the new businesses who generally have store owners manning the ship, and they get a chance to introduce their business/products to new customers, on a day when they normally wouldn’t have been able to. A couple of new/soon to be new businesses come to mind. So I guess “suck it up” probably wouldn’t apply to them at all actually.

This is a fairly family centric blog, but there are a whole range of people that don’t have kids, or don’t cook, and rarely go into a grocery store out there but they’re still spending their money. I doubt they will start going there on Sundays, just to get beer. They’ll probably go where ever they went before, and maybe even on a Sundays. I’m almost inclined to feel more sympathetic the wait staff of local restaurants, because people watching their budgets (everyone I know) will probably still show up for the ambiance and a drink or 2, but perhaps those people would then go to the store instead racking up big bills on alcohol on Sundays.

There are just too many individual variables to determine whether this measure will equal success or hurt their businesses. But right off the bat seeing it as a bad thing, I just don’t get.

I feel a level of sympathy for the store owners, because it really was thrown in their lap, but this change was inevitable. It has been brought up several times in the Legislature in recent years. Maybe they didn’t think it would have been so soon, but it would have happened. And I hope for their sake, the doomsday bottom line predictions are false, and they turn a great profit.

BTW, DM, I don’t understand the last sentence of your original post, that if Dekalb stays dry and Decatur doesn’t, it could cut into Herb’s bottom line. Where, besides baby Kroger, Sherlock’s, the Hop ‘n’ Shop and teh new beer store, can I buy packaged alcohol inside the Decatur city limit? And none of them sells the hard stuff. (G & T season is officially open, you know.) I think what could hurt Herb is if Dekalb stays dry and Atlanta doesn’t. Green’s isn’t that far away, nor is the place on Moreland just south of L5P.